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Emergency response groups hold joint meeting

City of Salem emergency manager Roger Stevenson speaks with a Salvation Army representative. Emergency managers get to know leaders in the community in a meeting at Marion County Public Works, the better to coordinate responses during disasters.(Photo: Thomas Patterson / Statesman Journal)Buy Photo

Earlier this year, a group of people involved in disaster responses were scheduled to meet and talk about strategies for improvement. But the February meeting was postponed: a winter storm paralyzed the area for a couple of days.

The group of emergency managers, volunteers, nonprofits and faith-based organizations from across Marion and Polk counties finally held the rescheduled meeting Monday at Marion County Public Works.

The thinking behind the meeting was to get those who make a difference in disaster situations in one room to establish communication and collaboration in terms of preparing for, responding to and recovering from a disaster.

"There isn't enough money you can throw at this," said Polk County emergency manager Dean Bender. "It's all going to be people."

The short term goal of the meeting was to meet people and make connections, said Bender and Dianne Mekkers, government liaison lead for the Red Cross Cascades Region.

The longer-term goal, however, is to establish Community Organizations Active in Disasters, or COADs.

"It's kind of a network of networks," Mekkers explained.

Trevor Covington, regional disaster program officer for the American Red Cross, Cascades Region, described COADs to the group as a means of avoiding overlap and gaps in preparation and response.

One purpose a COAD can serve, for example, is mitigating an influx of unneeded donations, Covington said.

While the group spent some time discussing large-level disasters, Mekkers said they also need to focus on day-to-day issues such as flooding and storms. She shared results of a survey given to a small sample of emergency response personnel earlier this year that yielded surprising results.

A small fraction of those surveyed said they would be most interested in the preparation part of an emergency. A bigger group said they'd be interested in the response.

"Response is generally where people want to get involved. It seems to be generally more interesting," Mekkers said.

An even bigger group of those surveyed said they'd be interested in the clean-up and recovery part of the disaster.

The biggest group of all, however, indicated that they would be interested in helping in all three areas.

"What we need is a lot of ideas," Mekkers said. "This is an efficient way to get a lot of ideas in a short period of time."

"Our hope is then that next year at this time we'll have a meeting like this and everyone will already know each other," she said.